It was already dark when Helicopter 17 received an emergency call to proceed to Eaton Canyon. The fire was reported at 6:18 p.m.
Mike Sagely, one of the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s most experienced pilots, looked through night-vision goggles as he flew a helicopter over the San Fernando Valley.
“This is the light,” he told battalion commander Chris Siok, who sat next to him. Siok is poring over a map of Altadena, the community closest to the spreading fire, on his iPad.
It was the evening of Tuesday, January 7th. The last sixteen residents killed were still alive. Firefighters like Sedgley still have a chance to make progress in what is the second most destructive wildfire in California history by spraying thousands of gallons of water before the blaze becomes uncontrollable.
But at 6:36 p.m. – 18 minutes after the fire was first reported – their plan failed.
As they neared the inferno, the Copter 17 fell so violently that the two men were yanked from their seats, restrained only by seat belts. They are known for keeping their cool under pressure, but both men screamed.
A violent cyclone poured down from the mountain, blowing helicopter No. 17 up and down, left and right. Mr Sedgley was fighting for control of the plane.
“We knew we were in big trouble,” Mr. Sedgley said.
As a gust of wind blew the helicopter about 100 feet in altitude, an emergency light on the instrument panel flashed, warning that the gearbox was running out of fluid. This was not the case – the plane had fallen so fast that the oil had flowed from the pump to the top of the fuselage. In his 38 years and 11,300 hours of flying time, including countless combat missions for the Army, Mr. Sagely had never seen this happen.
As they struggled to stay aloft, they were stunned by dazzling waves of bright orange fire below. This article describes what happened inside Copter 17 on the night of January 7, based on interviews with 10 pilots and crew, as well as a reporter’s experience flying the same aircraft through Eaton Canyon a week later.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department is nationally recognized as a pioneer in the use of aircraft to fight fires. The department was the first county to convert a military Black Hawk helicopter into a firefighting helicopter called the Firehawk, which can carry a 1,000-gallon water tank. The department was also the first in the country to use night vision equipment to fight fires in the dark.
However, pilots flying that night spoke of frustrating weather conditions, with sustained 90mph winds overwhelming their equipment and bringing them to the brink of mid-air disaster. They said the night highlighted the futility of trying to fight the inferno of hurricane-like winds.
“Without a doubt, this is the worst incident I have ever experienced in my career so far,” said Ken Williams, a pilot with the department who has 42 years of experience and 11,000 flight hours. “That night, nature took control.”
“Like Jimi Hendrix playing guitar”
Mike Sagely spent most of his life in the air before being an aspiring Olympian, a Southern California volleyball player who joined the U.S. Olympic team after the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. When he was released, he joined the Army, aced his flight school exams and flew a variety of aircraft.
During his 17 years as a special operations pilot, his military career took him to Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and on numerous classified missions. He flew 2,000 hours of combat missions, almost all at night.
After joining the Los Angeles County Fire Department in 2009, he became one of the best night-flying firefighting pilots the agency has ever produced.
“He flew the helicopter like Jimi Hendrix played the guitar,” said Ed Walker, a firefighter and paramedic with the department who sat with Mr. Sedgley on numerous phone calls. beside. “It’s like the helicopter is a part of him. It’s an extension of his being.
Los Angeles is one of the most challenging areas in the United States for helicopter flying. The heat of the Mojave Desert and the altitude of the county’s mountains can put a strain on a helicopter’s engine. In the valleys and plains, pilots navigate busy skies, a tangled web of power lines and the vast expanse of America’s most populous county.
Flying over the county at night poses greater risks. Mr. Sagely has flown nearly 3,000 hours using night vision equipment, probably more than any other firefighting pilot in the country, which he likens to driving while looking at a cardboard toilet paper tube.
The county fire department handles a variety of emergencies: hoisting drivers to safety when cars veer off a canyon embankment, or transporting injured and critically ill people to hospitals. But Air Operations Section maintenance chief Dennis Blumenthal said two-thirds of the unit’s combat flying time is spent fighting fires.
They are headquartered in the industrial and working-class community of Pacoima in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley. An alarm sounds over the loudspeaker, alerting pilots and crew to emergencies. The printer printed out the details of the call, and the pilot and crew ripped the assignment off the printer and headed to the helicopter parked on the tarmac.
January and February are typically the quietest months for the air operations sector, when winter rains reduce fire risks. But this year there has been no heavy rain and the risk of fire remains high.
This disrupted the rhythm of the department’s maintenance schedule, with aging helicopters requiring frequent overhauls due to the stress of repeated loading and dumping. The water in the Firehawk’s 1,000-gallon tank alone weighs more than 8,000 pounds, the equivalent of lifting two regular-sized cars.
“No one in the world works as hard as we do to fly helicopters,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “We are continuing to put pressure on these machines.”
“Get out!”
At 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 7, pilots and crew members gathered in the Air Operations Conference Room for their daily briefing.
They were told what the National Weather Service had been saying for days: It was going to be very windy. The Bureau of Meteorology issued a rare “particularly hazardous conditions” advisory, with the federal government issuing only about two dozen warnings each year.
Pilots accustomed to flying in the gullies and canyons of Los Angeles County know what this means. Strong winds interact with the terrain in dangerous ways, flowing into canyons like rushing water from a mountain stream after a heavy rain. Like a riptide, wind can swirl like a whirlpool or fall from the top of a plane like a waterfall.
When the first major fire broke out on a ridge above Pacific Palisades on Tuesday, the leading department was the Los Angeles Fire Department, the city’s firefighting agency, which has its own fleet of helicopters. In the confusing patchwork of Los Angeles County jurisdictions, Pacific Palisades is served by the city fire department, not the county fire department. “This is not our soil,” said Mr. Siok, the battalion commander. As part of a mutual aid agreement, the county sent two helicopters and a Super Scoop, a plane that skims the ocean, sucks up water and dumps it on the fire.
At about 6 p.m., Mr. Siok and Mr. Sagely received a call about a fire in Malibu. They were aboard Copter 17, a 33-year-old Bell 412 aircraft that had flown more than 9,500 hours for the department. The Bell 412 is a descendant of the Huey helicopter, which was famous for its ubiquity during the Vietnam War. Mr. Sagely likes the Copter 17 despite its age and likens it to an old pickup truck.
Under the command of Mr. Sedgley, the pair reached Malibu, but the fire on the ground had already been extinguished.
The order to move to Eaton Canyon was given at 6:23 p.m., five minutes after a 911 caller notified the department of the growing fire conditions. Two other helicopters, a Bell 412 and a Firehawk, both equipped with water tanks, took off from the department’s base and headed to the fire with Helicopter 17.
Typically, the pilot would take off, find a reservoir near the fire, lower the plane’s giant snorkel into the water, and refuel the tanks. The pilot then flies close to the flames and presses a button to dump the water.
But once the three helicopters arrived at the fire, they were jolted by violent downdrafts and an equally disturbing updraft. During one stomach-turning plunge, Mr. Williams, piloting his Bell 412 behind Mr. Sedgley’s Copter 17, looked down at the instrument panel and saw that he was falling at 1,000 feet per minute. He came within 400 feet of the valley floor.
“I knew immediately this could be catastrophic and the plane would be pushed to the ground,” Mr Williams said.
The pilots fought the wind with all their might. They adjust the tail rotor with their feet. They scrambled to pull up the collective with their left hand, a lever used to change altitude to compensate for the wind pushing them down. with their right hands, They pushed on the loop levers, the levers that tilt the rotors, trying to keep the plane pointing into the wind.
The instruments told Mr. Sagely that the speed of the air hitting the front of the aircraft was 85 knots, about 98 mph. But when he looked out the window, he realized he was actually going that speed—but being pushed backwards by the wind.
At 6.45pm, nine minutes after arriving on scene, Mr Sagely and Mr Siok made the difficult decision to cancel the water supply operation. There was nothing left for them to save.
“Microphone! Get out of there! Now! Mr. Williams radioed a message to his fellow pilots ahead of him.
Mr Sagely and Mr Siok stayed for a further 39 minutes, briefing commanders on the ground on the path of the fire. They were the last fire helicopters in the air that night. All other aircraft have been grounded.
By the time they landed at Pacoima, nearly out of fuel, they saw the air operations section in combat mode, ready and waiting for the winds to calm down and begin the next phase. Blumenthal’s mechanics began scrambling to put a mothballed, decades-old helicopter back into service.
In the seven days following the Eaton fire, the county air fleet flew 170 hours – more flying hours in one week than they typically fly in the entire month of January.
Still, Mr Sagely described the evening of January 7 as a day of failure.
“You should try to save the situation, but sometimes you have to give up on that,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t do anything. You can only watch things unfold and you can’t do anything to change it.
When the wind died down, he took comfort in the work he and other airmen had done to save homes from the many fires, large and small, that the department was called to put out.
On Wednesday, more than a week after the Los Angeles fires began, Los Angeles Police Department Officer Jeff Rivera showed up unannounced at the air operations office.
The sergeant was at his home in Acadia, east of Altadena, a week ago when winds suddenly picked up and fires raging in the Angeles National Forest began to move up the hillside toward his home. He and other residents were powerless to stop it.
From the sky they heard the roar of helicopter rotors and saw a white plane with yellow stripes. This is Copter 15, a Firehawk fully loaded with water. Sergeant Rivera captured a video on his cell phone of the plane descending to the edge of the fire, dropping its load of water and extinguishing the wall of fire.
“They literally saved the entire area,” Sergeant Rivera said in the air operations office. “I’m here to thank them.”
